


Songs of Ignorance

by morosophe



Category: Dungeons & Dragons (Roleplaying Game), Original Work
Genre: And if it makes somebody's day better somewhere it's worth it, And then the game never got off the ground, College, Even though it never will, Gen, Magical Realism, Planescape (D&D), RPG backstory, Really I was trying to make a backstory for my character and I did this, Still I put a lot of work into this, Tarot
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2006-07-01
Updated: 2006-07-01
Packaged: 2018-03-17 20:17:09
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,931
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3542480
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/morosophe/pseuds/morosophe
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He'd finally got a fix on the scent while getting some supplies from one of the college janitors.  (It was amazing what they were in a position to pick up without it causing any kind of trouble.  Virgin's tears, for instance--they were about the last legitimate suppliers.  The extra pay they got from it was about the only thing that kept some of them alive, too, so everybody gained, except, presumably, for the overwrought virgins.  And they'd probably be glad that somebody got something useful out of whatever personal tragedy had struck, if they ever learned about it.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	Songs of Ignorance

**Author's Note:**

> Yeah, the title is a take on William Blake's famous collections of poetry.

Al'd noticed the girl's slightly superior gaze on and off through the night. She didn't seem attracted by what he was doing, and he'd braced himself for the lecture she would probably eventually work herself up to giving--about how he was exploiting and reinforcing people's outmoded superstitions for his own pitiful gain. Either that, or how he oughtn't to squander his obvious talent on such worthless subjects, but do something useful with them. College-aged kids were always wanting it to be their turn to lecture, he'd found, and he didn't usually mind it, although the latter kind of lecture made him feel more of a con artist than the former. It was a game, that was all, and most people who "consulted" him understood that, first giggling at his patter and then trying to appear serious listening to the wildest futures he could come up with. Those who actually took him seriously usually got the equivalent of "Results fuzzy; try again later"; they tended to make him nervous.  


But he was here on business tonight, so even the one who'd watched with doe-eyed admiration hadn't been able to scare him away. He was close, he knew it, so close he could almost taste it. He was pretty sure Konstantin wasn't interested in this one--whether it was because he didn't consider it worth pursuing, or because he hadn't noticed it, Al wasn't sure. Either way, here was his big chance. Or not. There was a reason Konstantin might have let this fish by, and it wasn't just that kids this age wouldn't show him the degree of deference Konstantin considered appropriate and necessary.  
  
On the other hand, Al realized, this might be a pretty big fish. He'd finally got a fix on the scent while getting some supplies from one of the college janitors. (It was amazing what they were in a position to pick up without it causing any kind of trouble. Virgin's tears, for instance--they were about the last legitimate suppliers. The extra pay they got from it was about the only thing that kept some of them alive, too, so everybody gained, except, presumably, for the overwrought virgins. And they'd probably be glad that somebody got something useful out of whatever personal tragedy had struck, if they ever learned about it.) In his subsequent ramblings around campus, he hadn't been able to pinpoint it any more than just the dorm where he was now reading futures as a kind of sideshow for the big event that was some spoiled college kid's version of the sort of birthday usually associated with much smaller tots, when it would have pony rides for all. Al guessed he was another sort of pony ride--different enough to be exciting, but never showing any signs of bounding or rearing away from the ground of his clients' basic assumptions. He didn't want to make any ripples, after all.  
  
But that was what was so surprising about his target. He was pretty sure he was near its home--her home, he guessed, if she lived in _this_ dorm--but only now was he finally getting to the point where he could distinguish her trail. That could mean, of course, that she was nothing particularly special--good enough for a few tricks, but not worth even his time, let alone Konstantin's. But every once in a while, the trail would widen in a way not usual to such small fry--around the piano, Al'd noticed in particular. That bespoke talent enough to shield--and training, too, of course. But the blast of power that had banished that Hsoid demon didn't give the same message. Ability was in it, yes--training, no. It didn't even take much ability to banish a Hsoid, tricky demons as they could be. A couple of the right rituals, and you were right as rain, provided you could get a personal item from one of their victims. That's why Al had taken the job on himself, for once, although convincing the hysterical widow to let him have some sort of memento had proved more difficult than he'd anticipated. In fact, he hadn't been able to do it before the blast of power he'd felt a mile away had disposed of his job once and for all. He'd still collected from his client, of course--no need to look a gift horse in the mouth, eh? Unless you were Al, worried about someone who could afford to waste that much raw power just to get rid of a Hsoid (and who just maybe would want to collect on the job, too. But she hadn't even tried). Even if Konstantin hadn't seemed to even notice.  
  
So, the point was, Al was close to solving this mystery, which made him happy. He didn't like mysteries happening here, in the heart of his territory. Not mysteries he wasn't instrumental in helping make himself, that was. So close...  
  
"You're doing it wrong, you know. It's like you don't even care," the girl with the superior stare said, as she sat at the table in front of him. "I could do a better job in my sleep. You gave Stephanie Natalie's fortune, you pulled Wanda's fortune all out of order, and you didn't even try with the other three. Not that it would have mattered--you totally misread Natalie's fortune anyhow, when you gave it to Stephanie. That's probably why nobody's interested in you anymore."  
  
Abruptly pulled out of his thoughts, Al was so caught off guard by the girl's critique of his Tarot-reading skills that he allowed himself to bristle. Tarot was a fun game, yes, and one at which he excelled, but as for believing it?--the girl was so clearly puffed up in her silly superstition that he couldn't resist the urge to bring her down. "All right," he said tossing her the cards, "if you can do it better, why not tell me my fortune? I'm not afraid of being told about my horrible death by drowning, and I've always longed to see a true Tarot master at work." He gave her a little seated bow, secure in the knowledge that his abrupt change in accent (he'd worked so *hard* at accents, all the little tells, in fact, that marked him as an outsider. Not that any of it mattered) would already have thrown her off her guard. Now she wouldn't know whether to give the fortune of the "exotic" Mexican he'd just been pretending to be, or the crisp Etonite he'd just impersonated. Either way, she'd be wrong, as he'd prove when he'd switch to his Philadelphian to thank her ever-so-politely--his favorite of the lot, he had to admit.  
  
"Certainly," she replied calmly, and stood up, motioning him to follow. "As you _should_ know, it's almost impossible to give a proper fortune in a room with as many people as this one has, so we'll have to find a little more privacy. I don't think there's anybody in my floor lounge. Come along!"  
  
Not the most gracious invitation he'd ever received, Al thought as he trudged after the girl. Still, it would give him more of a chance to poke around a little after her "reading." Slipping away from the party on his own would have been a little more difficult. Maybe he should acclaim her as a master in thanks for her unwitting help.  
  
"Here we are," she said, closing the door behind them. As if the three sofas in indeterminate colors and assorted magazines hadn't warned him that he had entered that take on "down-home comfort" peculiar to college dorm lounges and the waiting rooms of particularly impecunious doctors. "Why don't you sit down there," she said, pointing to a couch with a table in front of it, still holding somebody's ancient laptop, "and I'll get ready. Oh, you can shove Kimberly's laptop under the couch--she won't care, and then it won't be in the way. Now, don't move," she said, "or you'll distract me."  
  
This was a new approach to Al. "Prepare" for the reading? As well "prepare" for a game of Yahtzee. The fun was in coming up with interpretations, not-- Oh, shoot. The girl was warding. Pretty well, too. The windows, the doors--the noise trickling up from whoever-it-was's "birthday party" abruptly died--even the floor and the ceiling so often neglected. After all, anything that could come through the ceiling probably wasn't going to be stopped by something as simple as a ward. Then she turned around and glared at him, and for a moment, Al was positive she was going to give him some sort of nasty message from Konstantin, warning him to stop poking his nose where it didn't belong (but he hadn't actually _done_ anything to antagonize Konstantin, he mentally wailed)--but she merely said, "Shuffle the cards again. Don't bother listening to your own patter about thinking about anything in particular--just shuffle them, in my presence. Thank you. Now, pass them to me. It's my turn." It looked like she did actually intend to read his fortune, after all, having warded like a master for it. Well, there you were: there, in a nutshell, was the mixture of power and appalling ignorance that had marked her from the first. This was, indeed, his target. And deflating her self-opinion had just become a duty. This was going to be _fun._  
  
"We start, as you know, with where you are now," she said, tapping the top of the pile in a little pattern that was _almost_ rhythmic. It set Al's teeth on edge. "The first card describes who you are; the second, your goal; the third, your obstacle. Now, I'm nowhere near a master Tarot-reader," she returned his little half-bow, "so all I can give you will be very general impressions about your life. Here goes," she said, and with no more ado, flipped over the top card. "Ah, the Mage. Reversed, it would symbolize potential; as it is, it represents actuality. The mage can represent several different things, of course, depending upon where it is, but I don't think you need to look far to figure out what it means in this context. Next," she said, stopping her tapping again to flip over another card and place it below and to the left of the first, "your goal: the Moon. Meaning, obviously, connection. Interesting. How have you lost connection? Well, the next card should tell us, shouldn't it?" she said, grinning defiantly up at him as he grinned back at her. Except for that bit about the mage, which she probably assumed to mean "con-man," her patter so far hadn't particularly impressed him with anything but brevity. Certainly not content. He'd never heard that card interpreted as "connection," and he'd been doing this a while. The World, or Two of Cups, or even the Lovers, yes. But The Moon? She was zipping through these fast, though, wasn't she? He'd have, oh, pointed out the candle the Magician was holding, talking about all of its potential meanings and "zeroing in" on the one it meant in this case. A good card reading was supposed to take some time--otherwise, your clients felt cheated. Even the ones who only intended to giggle at it. You weren't supposed to race through somebody's fortune as if they were particularly transparent. Ah, well. Maybe he'd give her some tips on it sometime.  
  
"The Hanged Man," she said. "Oh. That's how you lost connection. You're no longer connected to your groundings, your earth, just as the Hanged Man is no longer connected to the ground. How'd you do that? Accident, or something? Well, why don't I just see?" she said, apparently taking his silence as a challenge. That had hit just a little too close to home. "The next trio is, after all, your past. If I were a better reader, I could tell where you came from today to come to the party, and so forth, but once again, we'll have to settle for generalities. The first card in this trio is your origin, the second your greatest joy, the third your greatest sorrow or regret. Not, as you told Angela, your worst nightmare. Everybody has pretty much the same general nightmares, after all. That wouldn't teach us much. So, origin!" she said, slapping a card down at the table as he stared, annoyed, at her. That was the whole point of the nightmare bit--it put the mark in the correct slightly creepy mood for the "future" part of reading their future, with them thinking that maybe there was more to this than they'd thought.  
  
"The Walker," she said, looking at the card she'd just placed and beginning that irritating tapping again. Wait--the _what_? Belatedly, he looked down at the card. "You are not actually from this world, are you?" she asked. The fact that she seemed unconcerned about this was, in itself, concerning. "That's how you lost your grounding. Well, that question was easily enough answered. Maybe I'm getting better at this." This was his deck, Al knew. He'd bought it a few years ago, a standard Tarot deck. It was so scuffed he knew when the Fool was coming--he could see it now, slightly bent, near the bottom of the deck--and he'd never, ever seen a Walker in it. Particularly not--he looked closer--particularly not this Walker, the spitting image of the icon of Horjace the Mighty (well, he certainly qualified as a Walker, now, didn't he?), striding across a landscape with a background of some of the constellations he'd still occasionally be shocked _not_ to see in the sky, when he was far enough away from the city to actually see any stars. Where had she pulled that card from? Was this all some sort of setup from Konstantin, after all? But how could even Konstantin know what his home world's constellations were? He'd certainly never told them to him. He'd never told them to anyone here. Blast, the girl was moving on once again, giving him no time to regroup his thoughts, let alone ask her about it. Well, what other tricks did she have (perhaps literally) up her sleeve?  
  
"The Fool," she said, placing the card. Wait--he'd just seen that card near the bottom of the deck, he knew he had. Yet, there it was, rocking on its base a little, as always. Had she plain old-fashioned palmed it? He hadn't felt any flare of power, just the low-level ambiance coming from her ward--no, not just her ward, he realized, she'd been powering this little reading all along. "The Fool loves power and beauty, but doesn't know or care about consequences. Usually, nowadays, that indicates drug addiction, but it could be any number of other things, too. Sorry, I told you I'm not particularly masterful," she said, staring defiantly at him. Al remained quiet. It was actually a bit of a relief not to have to work his mouth for once. After all, he knew what the card signified, even if she didn't. The joy and, yes, pleasure, involved in casting a well-wrought spell for its own sake, even if achieved little, and nothing new. You had to hand it to her, it was certainly a past pleasure. But she was moving on yet again. "Now for sorrow, or regret--The Tower. Signifying destruction. Well, you're not alone in having that as a sorrow. Its reversed position indicates total destruction, with no hope of rebuilding. You've certainly burned your bridges behind you rather thoroughly, haven't you? Unless it's just a sorrow, not a regret. Well, on to the future! Let's hope it's a little brighter."  
  
This was suddenly too much. Al broke out of the paralysis that had held him since that impossible Walker had showed up to grab the girl's hand as a flare of power warned him that she was about to lay yet another card. Using magic to truly forecast the future was dangerous for several reasons, the least of which was that even the strongest ward couldn't protect you from the power drain your own spells brought. The thought that it could lock in a particular future was even more frightening to Al. If he was going to be locked into a particular future, he wanted to have stacked the deck first. Himself. Although he didn't particularly want his immediate future to be filled with a girl screaming as she burned herself out of magical ability forever, as young Donnie had once done. The greater the ability, the more painful the prospect. Donnie had died of it, Al remembered, but not without first giving the rest of the boys nightmares for weeks. Al still sometimes had them, on particularly stressful nights. The events had certainly ensured their instructors an easier time for a while, though. It was the thought of repeating the experience that caused him to grab the girl's arm with a strength he usually didn't possess and tell her "Enough!" with a quiet power and authority that was no part of Al's life--anymore. Well, he thought, if he had as much trouble with this girl as it looked like he would, catching the way her eyes flared with rebellion before she suddenly submitted, perhaps it was time that it was a part of his life again. The girl was going to be a handful, but she needed him before she killed herself in her ignorance.  
  
Plus, he just _had_ to learn how she'd done it.  


**Author's Note:**

> Originally intended for a Planescape-friendly game. Comments VERY welcome. (Hey, I'm not even expecting a kudos.)


End file.
